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# Bulgakov's play "The Cabal of Hypocrites", written in 1929 and devoted to the hardships of Molière's life under the yoke of Louis XIV, was permitted to be staged only after the vigorous intervention of Gorky, after a conversation between the author and St
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/napisannuiu-v-1929-godu-pesu-bulgakova-kabala-sviatosh-o-tiagotakh-zhizni-molera-pod-gniotom-liudovika-xiv-razreshili-postavit-tolko-posle-aktivnogo-vmeshatelstva-gorkogo-posle-razgovor/
- Published: 2025-05-18T16:32:08.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:30:06.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Archive, In the Press, Books, Monarchies, Moscow, Society

Rehearsals at the Moscow Art Theatre dragged on, however, and the play reached the stage only in February 1936, to colossal success! But first in "Sovetskoye iskusstvo" and then, barely a week later, in "Pravda", there appeared devastating reviews. I give the text of the "Pravda" article in full. The carping does indeed look far-fetched and built purely on matters of taste. Still, it was merely a formal signal that the play was to be removed from the repertoire. Which soon came to pass.

Between these two events came a memorandum to the Politburo from Platon Kerzhentsev, one of the architects of the Soviet censorship system and chairman of the Committee for the Arts under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. Kerzhentsev writes, among other things:

> "\[Bulgakov\] wants to provoke in the spectator an analogy between the position of the writer under the dictatorship of the proletariat and under the 'tyranny without trial' of Louis XIV."

> "...if one sets aside the author's political hints and the apotheosis of Louis XIV, the play is one of complete ideological emptiness: it raises no problems, enriches the spectator with nothing, but it does, artfully, in a lavish barren bloom, proffer poisoned drops."

It is strange to see a phrase about a tyranny without trial, which is precisely what is thought to have been already struck out of the text. How, in that case, did Kerzhentsev find it in the play? Or was it a deliberate lie on the part of a man who knew of the cuts made to the play, written to press on a sore spot? It is quite unclear. Bulgakov himself, when the repertory department urged him to rework the text in line with the criticism, flatly refused, saying: "I shall not move a comma." So perhaps he never changed "tyranny without trial" to "royal tyranny" at all, and Yevgeny Gromov, who writes of it in his book, is mistaken?

In the autumn of 1936 Bulgakov left the Moscow Art Theatre, disappointed at the ruin of his play. It would be staged again only in 1960.

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_16501@18-05-2025_19-32-08.jpg)

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_16502@18-05-2025_19-32-08.jpg)